INSIDE THE OVERHAUL

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The restoration crew poses at the stern. Photos by: Jeremy Morrison, Alex Jennings, Nick Gardner, and Mike Walls of Harbor Craft Films, a Baltimore-based video production company.

USS Constellation Gets A Welcome Refit

By Jefferson Holland, Chesapeake Bay Magazine

The Bay’s oldest and largest wooden boat gets the love she needs.

Driving over the Francis Scott Key Bridge across the Patapsco River, I could see the green knoll of Fort McHenry over my left shoulder with the skyscraper skyline of downtown Baltimore beyond. Over my right shoulder, I was surprised to be able to spot what I was looking for amid the industrial wasteland of Sparrow’s Point: the upright white masts and squared yards silhouetted against the angular arms of gigantic yellow rail cranes. If I could find my way across a maze of highway construction, railroad tracks, gatekeepers and abandoned warehouses, I would make it to the drydock where the USS Constellation was getting her bottom re-caulked.

Pre-release intern Brendan Blount struck a pose with the mammoth rudder, to send to his sister.

When I finally made my way there, I found the three masts and rigging poking up above the concrete rim of the drydock, while the black-and-white hull remained hidden. Perched on the rim, I looked down on the 168-year-old ship, her keel propped up on enormous blocks 30 some feet below. She is nearly 200 feet long from the rudder to the tip of the bowsprit, but sitting there in the corner of the vast concrete expanse of the drydock—big enough for Super Bowls LIII through LVII to play

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